Being a teacher isn’t easy. The hours are long, the work is often challenging, and the job can sometimes feel thankless. But teachers have a profound impact on the young lives they teach. The challenges facing the homesteading teachers of plains came with a laundry list of duties, in addition to teaching, and often these women would arrive to their small sod classrooms by horse, or if they were lucky, they might travel in style by carpooling in a wagon. But during the depression, these women felt lucky to even have a job, as many schools had run out of money and were unable to pay the teachers’ salaries. During winter months, snow would come through the walls, and the cold would chill the teachers and children to their core. The challenges didn’t end there for these strong, brave teachers. Mary Linville was one of those incredible teachers. Mary taught in the Roberts district on Cedar Creek in 1901. One day Mary and her sister Minnie, who was visiting her, went out to the prairie to pick up cow chips for the school stove (another one of the glamorous daily duties for teachers back then). The girls laughed and joked as they absentmindedly picked up the dried chips. By the time Mary heard the rattling buzz, it was too late, a rattlesnake was coiled under a sagebrush, and struck her on her hand. She screamed, and before she could move, it bit her again. Minnie managed to get Mary into the schoolhouse, and road to the nearest neighbor, Claude Roberts, who sent whiskey with the prescription to administer it freely while he made a dash on horseback to Sterling miles away.
By the time Dr. Stanton arrived from Sterling, Mary’s hand and arm were swollen badly, and because she was unaccustomed to the effects of whiskey, her head was in a poor condition as well. When Mary’s family arrived, they found her in grave danger, and as hours went by, hope was given up. Then unexpectedly, after a few days, she began to rally, and after some time, she recovered. Truth be told, the rattlesnake was a fairly common hazard of the prairie back then. Students and teachers often had little fear of the creatures. They would simply knock them over the head, toss them to the side, and calmly proceed with the lesson. Something tells me Mary likely didn’t take much time off of work after the incident either… While the times were tough, these women were tougher.
The Swiss manufactured music box before you was brought to Logan County from Alabama by the Sid Propst family who immigrated here in the 1870s. Mary (Johnson) Linville lived with the Propst family while she attended Sterling Industrial Arts High School and the music box was given to her as a gift in 1919. What a treasured gift this must have been to Mary and we are certain that she spent countless hours listening to these beautiful melodies. You can find more songs from Mary’s music box at: www.talkingtrail.com/overlandtrailmuseum...